Clean Language vs. Engines of Enquiry

August 13th, 2006 Fred McVittie

A routine part of all language and conversation is metaphor. Most of the time these metaphors are covert and pass unnoticed in speech and other expressive channels. However, within the flow of speech, and particularly in the back and forth of dialogue, metaphors not only convey the content but also structure the shared edifice that houses the conversation. When a subconsciously agreed upon set of metaphors is used, a mutual conceptual framework is built for the dialogue to inhabit. Quite often though, conversation and discourse proceeds not only be mutually agreed upon consilience of metaphor, but by a process of constantly shifting metaphor usage, one replacing the other as it loses usefulness or when the conversation ’stalls’ through the exhaustion of a particular line of metaphorical enquiry. This procedural mixing of metaphors has been referred to as an ‘engine of enquiry’.

In some, very particular, situations, e.g. therapeutic, exploratory etc. this communal exchange of metaphor, whether shared or mixed, is inappropriate. It is sometimes necessary to allow an individual to explore their own ideosyncratic use of metaphor and build/explore their edifice alone. The techniques of clean language originally conceived by David Grove, and developed by Lawley and Tompkins, lends itself to the facilitation of just such individual conceptual discovery.

Posted in Language, Lawley, J. & Tompkins, P., Metaphor, Unconscious | No Comments »